


to love you when you're far away

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months is three months too many.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to love you when you're far away

**Author's Note:**

> for charlotte, because your cuteness and unconditional support and the fact that i made it to your fic rec is 93% of the reason that this fic was written. i love you and your purely coincidental use of blue and green heart emojis.
> 
> and s/o to the rest of the squad: your beauty and talent and general loveliness inspires me every day, oh man. hopefully this is a good expression of my love and gratitude? you guys are cool beans.
> 
> title adapted from Seaside, by the Kooks.
> 
> ETA 11/29/16: hi i'm sophie, aka ao3 user @saltruism. i'm gonna orphan this work because i don't want it on my ao3 anymore, haha. anyway, in case you were like Hey Wait I Forgot The User That Wrote This, it was me, i wrote this. love you. bye.

Dean doesn't like Skype. He doesn't like the sound effects. He doesn't like the chat function. He doesn't like that Cas's profile picture is a dandelion.

Some things can't be helped.

He types in his password and feels like he's missing something, which he is. It's Cas, warm and far away on a Murphy bed in London, huddled in blankets and transcribing his linguistics notes into Google Docs. Three months is three months too many.

"I miss you," Dean says, before the video function itself has even started working. He has to give himself time to school his face into something that isn't _I love you,_ mapped out in a way that he knows will make Cas want to stay in London. He doesn't feel like toeing over the line today.

"I miss you very much," Cas says, seriously, and flickers onto Dean's screen. He's wearing rainbow knit fingerless gloves which Dean would very much like to think he borrowed from his host family.

Dean swallows and puts a hand to his neck, rubbing at a feeling he can't name. "I know you do," he says, soft. "Think you should send me a postcard."

"My flight home is in two weeks." Cas's voice is only marginally doubtful.

"Yeah." Dean closes his eyes for a minute and collects himself. "I mean, it's whatever."

It arrives two days later along with a package that must've cost Cas more to send that quickly than Dean thought he'd be willing to spend on something so utterly stupid. It's a nice glossy photo, trees clinging to the edge of a cliff in the mist, high above gray Atlantic waters that are choppy and capped with white. On the back there is a very short note: _I hope this is what you had in mind._ It's coupled with a little stick figure who is smiling and holding something. Dean has no idea what it's supposed to be, but he figures it's one of those things where it's the thought that counts.

Dean folds it and puts in in the front pocket of the coat hanging on his chair. The package itself is full of shitty tourist trinkets and, to Dean's extreme lack of surprise, a collector's edition box set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Exactly the kind of thing Cas would've scoped out first in England. It should be more embarrassing than it is, but that's what they bonded over, freshman year of high school. Tolkien and cool siblings. Now they live together. As Cas would say, that's the power of a good book.

But Cas is literally in London to study English linguistics. So there's a definitive nerd bias there.

He puts the package under his desk and heads to the kitchen, where he sticks his head in the refrigerator. "To check what groceries we need," he tells the apartment, to feel better about leaving the door open. His voice echoes strangely off the walls.

Cas isn't here to yell at him about wasting energy, so he doesn't have to lie to himself.

Maybe, he thinks, that's the problem.

 

 _lets try facetime,_ he texts Cas the next day. Because anything is better than Skype, even if Cas made his contact photo in Dean's phone a dandelion too, right before he left. Dean hasn't had the heart to change it.

So they FaceTime, but the connection is bad and one of the sons in the family Cas is staying with keeps saying things offscreen– not that Dean can hear, but that make Cas crack the kind of smiles Dean always thought were special to the two of them. It doesn't make him angry, or even really jealous– Cas is coming home to him, not to some asshole with a stupid accent– but it does make him feel sort of tired, and he doesn't know what to do with that, exactly. He's always full of restless energy, tapping his fingers on tables and on his knees, clicking pens, driving everyone up a wall. The past couple of months he's had barely enough energy to go on autopilot. He knows it's because Cas is gone, and he knows that should worry him. Instead of worrying, he slumps on his couch every weekend and watches Chopped.

Dean ends the call feeling thoroughly like he's been robbed. Of what, he's not really sure. He just feels kind of like the closer he gets to seeing Cas again, the harder it is to wait for him.

An hour after the call he works up the energy to go to the gym, which he's been terrible about all summer. He listens to Cas's workout playlist and doesn't make eye contact with Ruby when he sees her on the leg press.

She comes over and hangs on the edge of the treadmill anyway. "How long?" she asks, a little sharp. The evil sparkle that Dean always half-imagines to be in her eyes isn't there today. She wipes her neck with a hand towel and looks back at him, expectant.

"Thirteen days," he tells her, and stops the treadmill.

Ruby looks relieved. "Good. He's been texting me, but. It's not the same, you know?" Dean stares at her, and she rolls her eyes. "Sorry, I forgot you're clearly the most put-upon of all of us. How's the apartment holding up without him?"

"It's not, really," Dean tells her. Even as he says it he regrets how miserable he sounds.

"Jesus, don't be such a fucking sadsack." Ruby flexes her hand and glances away. "He's coming home. We should be celebrating."

"I know, okay, I know, I just." Dean makes a gesture that vaguely encompasses himself and the treadmill. "It's like I can't–"

"Excuse me," cuts in a voice from behind them. Dean turns around. It's some lanky guy Dean doesn't recognize with a full-on Adidas ensemble, sweatband and all. He has a bottle of Evian in one hand.

Dean blinks and tries not to make a snap judgments, which is something Cas would probably tell him. Christ, he's a goddamned disaster. "Can I help you?"

"You can get off the treadmill, since you're obviously not using it." Adidas Guy makes an unnecessarily accusatory face. Ruby snorts.

"I was just leaving," Dean says, before Ruby can say anything that'll get them both kicked out. Adidas Guy is gracious enough to say thank you, and Dean and Ruby watch as he takes an iPad out of his workout bag and places it precariously on the bar of the treadmill. He sets the treadmill pace to the lowest setting and opens Netflix.

"Damn," Ruby says, sounding almost impressed with Adidas Guy's casual-chic and relatively douchey affluence.

Dean nods slowly, and then, on a whim, says, "Let's get food."

"So you can unload about how much you miss your boyfriend?" Dean is about to protest, but she smiles and he decides he's safer leaving that one alone. "Let's do it."

They find a place a few blocks away from the gym, a nice little hipster gourmet burger place that Dean teases good-naturedly and that Ruby says Cas would like.

"Shit," Dean says, and drops his head forward towards his glass of water. He takes a deep breath or two. "The apartment is fucked without him. You asked, and I didn't really– I mean, I clean, and shit, but the dinner is fucked. You know."

"Yeah, the apartment must be pretty restless." Ruby pops a French fry into her mouth and talks as she chews. "Seriously can't even imagine how the apartment must be feeling right now. Hungry for non-microwaveable meals, pining, waiting until its roommate comes back so it can binge-watch Arrested Development on Netflix."

"Fuck, it's true," Dean tells her. "I'm still so bitter it got canceled."

Ruby laughs, long and loud, and Dean decides he sort of gets what Cas sees in her. Maybe.

 

"You and Ruby had lunch together," Cas says at one point during their next call. His host family's gone out to see a movie, and everything is mercifully quiet and calm. No British asswipe host brother to be distracting.

"She told you, huh." Dean grins. "You worried we're gonna gang up on you?"

Cas smiles, and Dean suddenly feels the crushing weight of the Atlantic in between them harder than he has all summer. "You wouldn't."

"People change." Dean sighs, purposefully melodramatic. He hears Cas call him an asshole faintly through the microphone. "Three months is a long time, dude. Maybe my loyalties have been divided. Maybe Ruby and I are scheming together."

"Well, I've never known your loyalty to falter," Cas says, and he's earnest in a way that makes Dean's chest tight. He's glad the lighting in here is shitty enough that Cas can't see his ears redden, which he feels sure they must be doing. Fucking betrayal, is what it is.

"Always ruining my jokes," Dean mutters. "Remind me why we're friends?"

"When you're drunk you say you love me because I am, and I quote, 'baller as fuck.'" Cas's face is utterly serious, but Dean still feels like he's being tricked somehow.

He splutters. "Why the fuck would I even– you're lying."

"What reason do I have to lie about that? You told me high school basketball was only fun because I was on the team, and because of the uniforms, which you seem to think made me look–"

"Oh, Christ, I remember, don't finish that sentence, for the love of– don't listen to me when I'm drunk, don't, don't listen to me when I'm sober, even."

"You said I was the real MVP," Cas says. Dean's life flashes before his eyes. "I was touched."

Dean rubs the back of his neck. "You're lucky you're my best friend," he says, "or I would be mean and tell you to shut up."

Cas's expression changes and Dean is hit with the sudden and somewhat unwelcome image of him saying something terrifying and salacious and un-Cas, like _I'd tell you to make me,_ or, shit. Shit, what even, Dean needs– he needs a glass of water.

Cas doesn't say that, of course, because he's more subtle, especially when he's on the other side of the ocean. "I am lucky," he says, and opens his mouth to say something else but then frowns as someone gives a wolf whistle in the background. "They're home," he says, "I should go." He looks apologetic, but it still stings, a little.

Dean tells him it's no problem and ends the call quickly, before Cas can say something stupid about family or home or missing him, because he'll just make it worse. Dean does that when they're on the phone, too– hangs up before Cas can ever say _love you_ or _drive safe._ He knows Cas doesn't like it, but it can't really be helped.

Dean walks to the kitchen and stares at the calendar. He's been counting down the days till Cas's return since the day he left, but the count has finally dipped into the single digits, and nothing energizes him more than looking at the red X over every day that's passed over the course of the shittiest consecutive three months he's had in a few years.

He knows it's been extra shitty because Cas is something approaching The One for him, and he can admit that, yeah, that's not the problem. The problem is that mostly he's pretty sure he can't love Cas the way he does. He doesn't know if it's internalized homophobia (Charlie spent an entire Saturday lecturing him about that particular Olympic-sized swimming pool of baggage in high school), or his massive guilt complex, or some other complicated brew of his various mental roadblocks, but something stops him from thinking it's realistic. Hell, Cas could fly home today with roses and profess his love, and Dean knows he could still figure out how to convince himself he read it wrong.

He isn't reading it wrong. He just has to tell himself he deserves to be reading it right.

 

The day that Cas's flight is scheduled to arrive Dean is edgy, thinking about things he wants to do this year, thinking about Cas figuring out grad school, thinking about how he needs a new job in a bad way. Thinking about everything except picking up Cas at the airport, which he knows will just put him in panic attack mode for the next six hours.

He's gonna be fine, though. He is.

The flight's supposed to land at 11:30pm, but Cas calls from Gatwick and says there's a minor delay, fifteen minutes, so they're looking at closer to midnight, possibly later depending on weather.

Dean puts his nervous energy to work and spends most of the day feverishly cleaning the apartment and persuading Victor to cover his shift at work, who agrees and even says– more proof that Victor is the best– he'll cover him tomorrow as well. When Dean thanks him, fervently, Victor says he's only doing it because he thinks Cas is a cool guy. Dean can live with that.

Dean leaves for the airport an hour early expecting to deal with Saturday night traffic, but by some ill-timed miracle hits pretty much nothing. He's got a lot longer to sit and wait, now, but it's not like he was going to get anything accomplished at home. He picks up a magazine someone left behind and tries not to make eye contact with the man behind the desk.

When they're fifteen minutes out, the man waves at him. "Picking someone up from the London flight?"

"Yeah," Dean calls back. "My roommate."

"Aw." The man smiles. "You must be a good friend."

Dean laughs, sheepish, and scratches his throat absently with one hand. When people start coming out of the door to the jetway, he jumps up– almost an involuntary movement– and he can hear his heart in his ears, in his jaw.

Cas is one of the last to come out, looking smaller than Dean remembers him. His smile, when they make eye contact, is sort of unforgettable and excruciating and Dean finally feels all that nervous energy surge back into his body at once, like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket and held it there. It's too much, but then it isn't.

"Cas," Dean breathes, and it's dreamlike, the way Cas's pace quickens as he walks towards Dean, the way he drops his suitcase on the ground, how tightly they are now holding each other. "Never again, okay," Dean says, into Cas's hair. He's only half joking. "Three months is too goddamn long." Some people are staring at them when they pull away from each other, and one of the flight attendants is cooing to the man at the service desk and pointing at them, but Dean frankly can't be fucked to care. Cas is home. Home is gonna look so damn good on him.

"It's good to hear your voice in person," Cas tells him, and holy hell.

"It's good to hear you without Douchebag McAsshole in the background being distracting."

Cas looks away like he knows exactly what Dean means by that, and frowns. "Dean, I don't want you to think he–"

"I get it. I'm sure he was a good guy. Forget I said that, I'm just. Sorry, it's been a tough week and I'm kind of an asshole. Sorry. Let's, um, I want this to be a good day. Night. Whatever." "

Let's get food," Cas suggests, and it's late as hell so they do a Denny's date, sitting in a booth, eating shitty pancakes and listening to the midnight sounds of the highway. Dean can't keep his eyes off of Cas and doesn't really try to. Three months. Three _months._

When they get back to the apartment it's almost two, but they're both wired as hell, and when Cas sinks onto the couch he immediately opens Netflix. "Dude," Dean groans, "falling asleep here is shit for my back." He sits down next to Cas anyway, close enough to be almost uncomfortable in the summer heat, and throws an arm lazily behind Cas's head on the cushion. Smooth operator, that's Dean Winchester.

Dean falls asleep halfway through the first episode of Monk or whatever singularly-gifted-male-lead-detective show Cas has put on.

He wakes up several hours later, feeling impossibly well-rested, and shifts to glance over at Cas, who's awake and staring at the ceiling. Dean allows himself a grin at Cas's expense. "Is that how people from your planet sleep? Or recharge, or whatever?"

Cas starts a little and gives him a wholly unimpressed glance. "I think you've just about exhausted that joke, Dean."

Dean closes his eyes and settles back into the couch and it occurs to him that maybe he should tell Cas all the scary important things he's been thinking about. Right now, while there's still the chance that Cas is too sleepy to remember anything properly.

"I should make breakfast," Cas says, offhand, which means he isn't sleepy, which is. Rare. Probably a foreboding sign. Cas is not a morning person.

"Wait." Dean scrambles up and follows Cas into the kitchen. "Uh, can I–"

Cas points to the refrigerator. "If you want to help, could you please get some eggs out of the refrigerator?"

"Can we talk first?"

Cas turns to face him, a spatula in one hand and a spoon in the other. There's a pause. "Is everything alright?"

"Just wanna, um. Last night, I said– I wish I was kidding, but sorry, I'm an idiot about you, I, I mean–"

"Dean?" Cas puts the spoon down, but clutches the spatula tighter.

Dean resolves to not be weirded out by that and plows on. "Like– I don't know, I, I was a mess this summer, and I think it's 'cause you weren't. Here. Y'know. I mean I know that's why, and it's why I said you shouldn't do that kind of thing again, but I know I can't– I'm not trying to get in the way of what you want, I won't ask you to stay if you don't, uh. Want to."

Cas gives him an expression that's almost like pity, but it's too pleased. Cas is a sap. "You said it had been a long week."

"Well, you've been driving me batshit," Dean tells him, and smiles with his eyes closed for a second. If he opens them, he won't be able to say it. "Because I'm in love with you." It's not so much stepping over the line as it is driving a tank over the line, but Cas is too good to care. Dean hopes so, anyway. Cas's expression, when Dean opens his eyes, is hard to read.

"I can't tell if you're joking," Cas says, and his jaw is tight all of a sudden. Dean sort of feels as if a dam has broken inside of him, stagnant water turning white in the rush. It's like his entire body deflates a little bit, sags under the sudden loss of the tension in his back. It's dizzying.

Dean could say something brave, but it's not like he has anything to prove. "Only if you want me to be," he mumbles, and tilts so he can rest his forehead on Cas's shoulder. It's been a long week. It's been too many long weeks.

"I don't," Cas tells him, his voice painfully soft and restrained. It kills Dean, just a little.

"Was really hoping you'd say that," Dean chokes, something half-laugh and half-broken. He thinks his hands are shaking and he hopes Cas can't tell. Shaky hands are up there with crying on his running mental list of things he can't let anyone he loves see.

Cas breathes, and Dean lets himself enjoy the way he can feel it even more than he can hear it. "You thought this summer meant that I wanted to leave permanently."

"Couldn't help it, you're so good to me. You've been good to me for like– ten, eleven years. Good stuff ends. I want you to be happy."

"I'm happy here," says Cas. "I am happy just being with you."

"Jesus." Dean steps back and they stare at each other. "I love you. Like, love love, or whatever, I'm really in love with you. And you don't have to say– I mean, I know, I'm sorry it took me so long to work around to this."

Cas's voice shakes like Dean's hands. The two of them should be more stable than this, probably. "I should not have left for London without–"

"Shut up, shut up. You're okay. Just." Dean shrugs, but he knows it doesn't come off at all casual. "Just, you know, a little warning next time."

"Next time I won't leave without you," Cas says, and kisses him, and everything is so simple.


End file.
